Social and Emotional Learning from the Inside Out
by Stephanie Jones and the EASEL Lab
Social and Emotional Learning from the Inside Out
The EASEL Lab, led by Stephanie Jones at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, has developed a number of practical tools and resources that provide information about social and emotional skills and competencies, relevant frameworks, as well as effective strategies, practices and programs that enable stakeholders to make informed decisions as they plan, implement, and assess SEL initiatives in their schools and communities. Please see below for more information about these tools and resources, as well as how to access them.
Navigating Social and Emotional Learning from the Inside Out
Despite widespread interest in social-emotional learning, and the growing variety of curricula available for use in preschool and school settings, there is actually little information available to school and district leaders about what different approaches actually do, what specifically they are intended to change, and what evidence supports them. Addressing this research-to-practice gap, over the last several years, the EASEL Lab conducted a detailed content analysis of 25 leading social and emotional learning programs intended for use with elementary-school-age children. The focus of the analysis was on identifying key features and attributes of SEL programming and on making comparisons across program approaches so that district and school leaders would have a detailed, research-based tool to make informed decisions about what to use in their context. The EASEL Lab is currently updating the elementary guide to include PreK as well as additional programs and is building a new guide for middle- and high-school. The updated elementary guide is expected to be released in June 2021, and the middle- and high-school guide in Spring 2022.
Explore SEL & the PSS-SEL Toolbox
Explore SEL, a product of the EASEL Lab’s Taxonomy Project, is an ongoing project that responds to the need for greater transparency and precision in the field of SEL. Explore SEL provides a set of open-source, online interactive tools to help researchers, educators, policy-makers, funders, and other stakeholders to better navigate the broad field of non-academic skills. These user-friendly tools and resources support exploring, connecting, and comparing SEL frameworks and skills. Tools include an online Thesaurus with information about various skills and how they are linked to other skills, as well as a set of interactive visual illustrations that enable stakeholders to see and understand key similarities or differences across frameworks and between discrete SEL skills. Working in collaboration with the Inter-agency Network for Education in Emergencies (INEE), and building on the platform and methods of Explore SEL, the PSS-SEL Toolbox is designed for stakeholders working on psychosocial support (PSS) and social emotional learning (SEL) in global settings, with a focus on education in emergencies (EiE) and humanitarian response to protracted crises. The multi-year partnership is designed to explore current approaches to PSS and SEL within education in emergencies (EIE) contexts. The broad goal of the work is to produce a set of tools and resources that support coherence and coordination in the field, and ultimately improve the sector’s ability to develop, implement, and understand the effectiveness of PSS-SEL initiatives in the world’s most vulnerable communities. Our aim is to create the conditions and supports that enable stakeholders working in the EIE sector to name, invest in, measure, research, evaluate, and improve PSS-SEL initiatives for the world’s most vulnerable children and youth. The Toolbox is being developed through an iterative process with members of the INEE PSS-SEL Collaborative and other stakeholders in diverse humanitarian and crisis settings around the world.
In response to a growing interest in social and emotional learning and the need for cost-effective and easy to use strategies, the EASEL Lab has been developing and testing a set of evidence-based kernels of practice. Kernels are specific activities or strategies that are commonly used by effective programs to support SEL and other non-academic skills such as character and mindset. Kernels can be used quickly and flexibly, and enable educators to select only the strategies that best fit the needs and goals of their specific students. Kernels are currently being implemented and evaluated in a variety of settings spanning PreK through high school in both US and international contexts. The core set of SEL Kernels can be accessed through the Greater Good in Education website.
In September 2020, the LEGO Foundation launched a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) to help educators, parents, and caregivers of children cope with the changes brought about by COVID-19 as well as support children’s social and emotional development through times of crisis. Researchers from Harvard’s EASEL Lab, Cambridge University, New York University, the Mental Health and Psychosocial Support Collaborative, and the University of Notre Dame collaborated to create the nine-week long course. The course, titled “Coping with Changes: Social-Emotional Learning Through Play,” is hosted on the FutureLearn platform and is free for anybody to access globally. The course’s content covers the LEGO Foundation’s philosophy on Learning through Play, how that relates to social emotional learning (SEL), how adults can support children cope with changes, guidance for specific age groups (i.e., early childhood, middle childhood, and adolescence), and how adults can take care of their own well-being during times of crisis. Each week or unit is broken down into smaller steps that a learner can generally complete in five to ten minutes or at their own pace. Every unit is designed to allow learners to practice what they learn and apply it to their lives. At the end of every unit, guided reflections and discussions provide opportunities for them to reflect on what they learned and how they plan to use it. The course focuses on highlighting scientific research in a playful and accessible manner. Through discussion boards, it supports the development of a global community of adults interested in learning about SEL and applying it to support the children in their lives.
Stephanie Jones is the Gerald S. Lesser Professor of Child Development and Education at Harvard University's Graduate School of Education, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Stephanie's research, anchored in prevention science, focuses on the effects of poverty and exposure to violence on children and youth's social, emotional, and behavioral development. Over the last ten years her work has focused on both evaluation research addressing the impact of preschool and elementary focused social-emotional learning interventions on behavioral and academic outcomes and classroom practices; as well as new curriculum development, implementation, and testing. She is a recipient of the Grawemeyer Award in Education for her work with Zigler and Walter Gilliam on 'A Vision for Universal Preschool Education' (Cambridge University Press) and a recipient of the Joseph E. Zins Early-Career Distinguished Contribution Award for Action Research in Social and Emotional Learning. Stephanie holds a B.A. in psychology from Columbia University, USA and a M.S. in development psychology from Yale University, USA. She obtained her Ph.D. in development psychology in 2002 from Yale University, USA.